Page 237 of Children of Fallen Gods

“Creating is harder than destroying. In the end it’s always worth it.”

Gods. When Sammerin said things, he said them like a promise. I nodded, closed my eyes until they stopped stinging. When I opened them again, I cleared away everything but focus.

“Go,” I said. “Quickly.”

I was already turning away by the time the words were out of my mouth. I did not know how long the energy I stole from the fallen Syrizen would last — and Max was running out of time.

I ran down the stairs. The fog grew thicker, the dense feeling in the air stronger and more painful as I descended. It built inside of me, too, a knot growing in the pit of my stomach.

I wondered if this is how Max had felt as he ran down the halls of Esmaris’s estate, when he came back for me.

He had always come back for me. Just as I would always come for him.

I just had to be fast enough.

Chapter Eighty-Two

Max

Hello.

This was not Reshaye.

It slithered through my head the same way, and had the same inhuman, unmarked quality. But this was a different voice. This connection was more chaotic, more tenuous. I could feel the ragged edges of the thing that was speaking to me, like a silhouette that couldn’t quite step into focus. It was more real than Reshaye. More alive. And its hands were wrapped around my throat, squeezing, squeezing.

The world had fallen away. I was somewhere different now, somewhere I had only caught glimpses of during the worst of my Reshaye-induced fever dreams. A dead plain, and a starry sky. In a physical world that seemed very far away, I understood that my body was still there, time suspended, my knees on the stone ground of the Scar, surrounded by fire.

This place? This was different. Deeper than the physical world. And the voice had dragged me here.

Where are they?it asked.

Who are you?I demanded.

Where are they? Where is she?

She? Tisaanah? Nura? With my confusion, their faces shot through my mind, and the presence grabbed the images.

It paused at Tisaanah’s face. Familiarity.

I didn’t like that. Not one bit.

Who are you?I repeated.

I am the blood of the people that yours have stolen,the voice said.And I’m reclaiming what has been taken from me.

Focus.

If I tried very hard, I could solidify the world — or, the not-world — around me enough to see it as a physical place. If I focused, I could see the shadow as something resembling a person. My magic snaked out towards it.

The images split my vision, like a crack of lightning lighting up the sky for a fractured second at a time. A man’s face, startled and angry, gone too quickly for me to recognize it. Copper gates covered in crawling vines. Overflowing bookshelves and glimpses of writing I did not recognize.

All there and gone in less than a second.

The presence flickered, like it had been struck, then charged towards me with renewed rage.

I sense her in you. In your blood and in your magic. And I will not abandon her, nor any of the others your people have taken from me. Humans are past the point of earning our forgiveness. You had mercy once and squandered it. Now I see that you have never deserved it.

Another avalanche of images. This time of bodies strewn in swampy forest. Dead faces beneath the water. A woman’s face that I did not recognize, with sad violet eyes. The images merged and tangled with those of my own, the aftermath of Sarlazai, my family’s burnt corpses. Tisaanah’s mismatched gaze.

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